I've been getting a shooting pain in my elbow as of late. My training partners think that it's from using reverse bands for my speed bench so I've completely cut that out. I'm still feeling the residual effects though.

More traction, more static stretching. As much as I loathe stepping off of a training cycle, I'm looking forward to not seeing the gym next week and going to The Keys. I'm hoping that a little time off will ease the pain that's developed from benching with bands.

This was a 50 pound PR for me so I'm extremely excited. The meet I wanted to do in December is canceled, so I'll be doing one in February now. With the way everything has been going lately I don't think it's out of the question to go 700 on the squat, 500 on bench, and 550 on deadlift. I'd be pretty close to an Elite ranking at that point. We'll see if the progress keeps up!

All sorts of exhausted now and not looking forward to writing a paper. Can anyone recommend a good vegan lifting belt? The belt that I have right now is suede, but someone gave it to me for free so I wasn't going to argue. I've been trying to find one that is heavy duty enough to support my chubby little self. If someone can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it!

Dynamic effort benching day. These workouts aren't always done in the standard Westside methods, but just to get some volume in and work on some explosiveness. I weighed myself today and am pleased with my progress of losing weight. I weighed in at 260.5 from 274 two months ago. I still don't have much of a neck and my XL shirts are still fitting well so I'm pleased with my progress.

Standard warm-up. I'm going to stop saying this because it's just implied at this point.

Everything was a little bit too easy today so I think it's time to increase the weights a bit. I am doing three week waves of doing a particular exercise; in this case benching with chains. On the fourth week I'll usually do repetition work. It's not very exciting, but I feel like I benefit a lot from it.